Is including references of journals with low or no reputation considered bad practice?

Question

I am working towards my PhD in a quite specialized area of engineering, at the overlap of two technologies. Because of this, there are not as many publications available in my field compared to other topics. Furthermore, there is no journal specializing in my area of work, and articles are published in a wide range of journals, some of them not the most reputable ones, to put it gently.

I nevertheless have used such references from journals perceived by some as disreputable, just because there are not that many in total to choose from. But often also because the articles aren't of bad quality, in fact, some of the articles in "shady" journals can be of better quality (IMHO) than articles in more reputable publications.

On the other hand, a lot of academics seem to find the idea to publish in a "low quality" journal abhorrent and claim they would never do so, indicating that these journals represent second-class science.

So my question is: is it bad practice to reference journals of low or no reputation or is it OK to do so if

• there is a limited overall number of references to chose from?
• the quality of the article is high enough? (This would beg the question if I, a lowly PhD student would be able to determine quality in a publication...)
• any other reason

I am curious what your opinion on this is.

Answer 1

To answer the question: No, it's not considered bad practice. You are meant to cite work that is closely related or even had an impact on your work, regardless of in what journals this is published. There is no problem with this.

Generally you should not blindly trust published work and make up your own mind about whether it makes sense, regardless of the reputation of the journal.

Something more general about journal reputation. Impact factors and the like, as well as the subjective opinions of people about journals, are not a very reliable quality indicator for the work that appears in the journals. Some journals achieve high impact by publishing headline-grabbing cutting edge stuff fast, sometimes sacrificing quality. High impact journals get loads of submitted papers these days and can easily reject papers after having an Associate Editor looking at the paper for three minutes. The authors may then be forced to publish in a lower reputed journal even if their work is actually fine. The same may happen with work that editors of highly reputed journals don't find "of general enough interest". I have even occasionally experienced better qualified reviewing at lower rated more specialist journals because these would nominate specialist reviewers whereas high impact journals are sometimes more interested in appealing to a more general audience and use reviewers that are, while mostly good, specialised in areas somewhat further away.

I'm not saying that high reputation or impact journals are in fact worse; surely the best people send their best stuff there, which means that many top papers appear in top journals. However there are a number of reasons why top papers may end up in not so highly regarded journals, many of which are in fact OK (some exceptions may exist). Particularly, any journal organising a standard peer review without putting pressure on reviewers and editors to accept papers (which may happen in "author pays for publication" journals or also if the main editor presses for speed too much) should normally publish OK quality stuff; responsible competent reviewers wouldn't accept anything wrong. As a reviewer, I will basically write the same stuff in my report about a paper regardless of the level of the journal, however I may recommend "accept" for a lower level journals and "reject" for a top level one if I think that the work is OK but with only rather small and/or predictable new results that don't require much genius even if these results make sense and are for sure fine to cite in related work. High level journals may have a somewhat easier job to convince the best people to review, but this doesn't mean that all reviewers of top journals are super-competent and those of lower level journals are ignorants. From my personal experience as author, the quality/level of compentence of reviews isn't very clearly correlated to the journal reputation. They just reject more at a higher level. The differentiation between the top and the not-so-top journals often is more according to how original and difficult the material is, and how "hot" the topic.

Answer 2

If you use insights from a publication, you must cite that publication, no matter how low the regard in which you or others hold the venue.

If you're nervous that there's a high risk the insights will be wrong, there are things you can do to reduce that risk:

• seek out an independent corroborating source for the same insight (and cite it in addition to the "low quality" source);
• check the chain of logic from evidence to conclusions in the "low quality" source step-by-step for yourself (and still cite the source);
• if it can be done ethically and affordably, repeat a few of the experiments (if any) reported in the "low quality" source to see if the results are reproducible (and still cite the source).

Answer 3

If you get an insight (or are referencing an idea/discovery), you need to cite where it comes from. Good/bad journal. Even trade journals, websites, personal communications, etc.

In addition, if you are surveying the literature (or semi-surveying at the intro to a paper), than you should list all the papers that would be useful for readers. I would use some judgment (this is a favor you are doing for the reader). List the most useful papers (good ones, mini-reviews, etc.). You should not feel the need to show everything (impossible in active fields, e.g. electronic thin films). But give the reader the best ones--after that he is on his own to get "cites from the cites" or to do his own ad hoc lit search.

In the event that citations are limited, I would probably lean more towards inclusion (of junkier stuff). Conversely, if there's a lot out there...show the best stuff and skip the "this is a paper about an individual film, not a set of them" type dross.

At the end of the day, this is not a Euclidean proof, but a thoughtful help to the reader. And some element of selection/exclusion is what you are delivering to them (and they will appreciate it...after all they can do their own search in addition). It can't be done perfectly since it is always up for debate. But it can be done thoughtfully and helpfully. Just like most practical problems in business, government, etc.

I definitely wouldn't be tentative about junky journals if you know the papers are good or if that's all there is. If anyone contests it, just say (truthfully hopefully) "I have spent years reading and working in this area and am one of the world's experts in it" (as an older grad student, this is actually a reasonable position...you are the expert in your thesis.)

All that said, I have found that junky journals are usually worse. But you will develop your own intuitions here, within your field. I know that in physics and chemistry, the APS and ACS specialty journals still are quite good. Even some of the Elsevier and the like competition. And Nature/Science (while very prestigious and many good papers) do tend to have more of a problem with headline-seekers and fraud. Since it is a big deal to get papers there and since they see themselves as more than just science journals, but somewhat news-y. Non-US national societies (especially excepting France, Germany, UK) tend to be worse. TEND. But I would look with a wary eye at Japanese Applied Films or the like. And I definitely wouldn't bother ever skimming the table of contents of such a magazine--only coming to their papers as parts of lit searches or "cite from cite" tracing.

But of course, look at the specific papers. You should develop enough perspective (and be enough of a critical thinker) to recognize some of the attention-seeker crappiness in Nature and/or find a diamond in the rough in Japanese Applied Films. And then obviously put the better stuff forward. Don't be a mouse.

Answer 4

As a PhD student in engineering myself I personally got the feeling that not many scholars care about the journal reputation in our field of research. I do not know how it is perceived in other areas, but, if the articles you cite are of quality although they are published in a „low reputation“ journal, you should absolutely cite them.

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Edit: I expressed myself very poorly in my original answer (hence, I deleted the paragraph!). My original answer could be (and was) understood in such a way that I recommended you to not cite papers from predatory journals. What I originally wanted to imply was that you should proceed with caution when using results from such papers if they were published in predatory journals. However, if you use them, you definitely have to cite them, also!